Chapter 76
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 76
The torrential rain poured down so fiercely it was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead. A thick fog, which had been rising since morning, blanketed the surroundings, and the sky was so heavily overcast it seemed as dark as midnight. Spotting a woman in the midst of such gloom would have been nearly impossible—had he not, by sheer chance, been standing at the doorway.
The moment the woman’s slender figure wavered as she stumbled along the path, he was already out in the rain. In that split second, he felt a flicker of anger at her recklessness—collapsing so carelessly in the freezing rain when she was already frail.
"What on earth do you think you're doing?"
He firmly grabbed her slender, limp arm and pulled her up from the mud. As he held her, a faint, hazy light returned to her lifeless, dark eyes. She looked up at him with a brief, gentle gaze of recognition, but her features quickly crumpled like a child about to cry.
"My uncle..."
That single, sorrowful sob was enough for him to piece together the entire situation. Her small hands were already clutching his shirt, as if it were the last thread connecting her to the world.
He cupped Vanessa’s ice-cold cheeks with both hands and lifted her face. Leaning in as if to kiss her, he felt her breath brush against his cheek—incredibly fragile, so faint it seemed a mere breeze could snuff it out.
"River."
Drenched in the rain, Vanessa's face was pitiful, yet breathtakingly beautiful. She was like the most magnificent rose from the Summer Garden, or a Siren beckoning from the depths of the ocean.
Bluish veins stood out starkly against her pale, bloodless skin, and her lips had turned a cold, bruised purple.
"Let's get inside first. Your body temperature has dropped too low."
The woman, who had gone still as if soaking in his warmth, lifted her gaze. Her trembling, unstable eyes brimmed with tears.
"What do I... do now...?"
"Vanessa."
Like a wounded animal, she rested her forehead against his chest. A tear fell onto her trembling lips as she struggled to catch her breath.
"Whenever things were hard for me... you were always there."
"……."
"You are the only one... who never... deceived me."
His breath caught in his throat, leaving him utterly speechless. Unsure of what to do, he gripped her slender shoulders. A strange, sickening discomfort blurred his vision.
"So, River... won't you please... stay by my side?"
Her lips, wet with a mixture of rain and tears, trembled pitifully. Beneath his fingers, her damp clothes clung loosely to her frame. The soft skin and burning warmth radiating from beneath them felt dizzyingly close. He exhaled slowly.
"Don't leave me... Even when summer ends, never..."
Rising on her tiptoes, Vanessa desperately wrapped her arms around his neck. Her slender arms, looking as though they might snap at the slightest touch, were as fragile and fresh as newly sprouted vines. He let her cling to him, terrified that if he tried to hold her back, he might lose control of his strength and bruise her. To think he was worrying about something so trivial at a time like this.
Through the haze of their mingled breath, he saw Vanessa trembling helplessly. He slowly wrapped his arms around her slender body, shielding her from the mercilessly beating rain.
It was laughable. Who was protecting whom, and from what? He had already deceived her.
"If it's Theo... is it Theodore?"
There had been plenty of opportunities to confess.
"The maids said a gentleman is moving into the abandoned mansion."
He was the one who had let every single one of those moments slip away. A minor lie that had seemed utterly inconsequential at first had snowballed. The price of postponing this tedious, emotional confrontation was proving exhausting.
"Now, I feel like you're starting to take our relationship seriously..."
He had known for a long time that her feelings for him were deepening. How could he not? The way she would hastily look away whenever their eyes met, the way her cheeks flushed crimson whenever he drew near, and the way her heart hammered breathlessly whenever he held her in his arms.
Confronted with such blind devotion, his chest had once throbbed with a deep, possessive satisfaction. All the while, his rational mind knew he had to put an end to it before things went too far.
"...Vanessa, I—"
Sometimes he had imagined it—the moment he would stand before her after this glorious summer had passed and confess the truth. On some days, he felt a fleeting pang of regret, knowing this season and their strangely equal relationship would never return. On other days, he brushed it off as inconsequential. Their summer wasn't over yet, and she was beautiful.
Perhaps it would be better to tell her the truth right now. But how could he?
Looking at her face, when the entire world she believed in had just crumbled, how could he dare tell her the truth?
"Hold me, River Ross."
He closed his eyes with a silent groan. For the first time, the name whispered from her lips sounded utterly horrific.
* * *
"I want you to hurt me. Just make me hurt today."
At her plea, which sounded more like a sob, River Ross let out a harsh, humorless laugh, his eyes darkening. His hollow, exhausted face looked like a ruin.
"Ah... please... hurry..."
As she writhed her hips in restless anticipation, the fingers that had been slowly stretching her slick passage slid out. Rubbing the wetness on his fingertips, River grabbed her thighs and pried them wide apart.
His rock-hard shaft parted her tender folds and pushed past her entrance. The thrust of his hips, driving into her tight, clinging heat, was mercilessly rough—exactly as she had breathlessly begged him to be.
Vanessa clung to his shoulders, enduring the overwhelming rush of pain and pleasure. She pressed her flushed cheek against his thick, veiny forearm. His shaft was so thick and rigid that even her slick depths, which should have yielded, tensed around him. Thick with bulging veins, his erection was the sole menacing feature on his otherwise elegantly sculpted body.
"Ah... mmh..."
As he pounded into her, his once-dry shaft quickly became coated in her slick moisture. Vanessa panted, desperately swallowing her moans. Every inch of her skin burned with heat, while his felt cool against her.
The stark contrast sent a thrilling shiver down her spine. She welcomed it. As long as this raw, intense sensation consumed her, all her agonizing thoughts were blissfully silenced.
"Ah..."
Her sensitive ears twitched with every slow, deliberate movement of his powerful body above her. The thick, upward-curving head of his shaft stretched her narrow passage, driving deep to her very limit. The sheer force of his thrusts was wild and animalistic.
Held firmly by the waist, her entire body was jolted upward with each deep plunge, only to crash back down in a dizzying haze.
The strength finally drained from her hands, which had been desperately clinging to his shoulders. As her arms fell limp onto the bed, he pinned both of her wrists above her head with one hand. Stripped of even the slightest defense, his mouth eagerly claimed her exposed breasts, sucking with a wet, heavy heat.
"Ah... River..."
Her flushed nipples, gently nipped between his teeth, swelled as if engorged with fluid. The sheer force with which he suckled her soft flesh was rougher than ever before, sending a shockingly intense jolt of pleasure through her.
"Ah... yes! Ah..."
He rained kisses down on her face, which was still cool from the rain—pressing his lips to her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks, and finally her mouth, where her hot breath escaped.
With every heavy thrust, her pale breasts, flushed with heat, bounced wildly. A dizzying sensation rippled down her arched spine as she chased the pleasure. Her legs, splayed wide, couldn't even find the strength to wrap around his waist.
Their skin, damp from the rain, clung together with a sticky, wet friction, amplifying the wanton sounds of their coupling. The high, thin whimpers escaping her throat sounded foreign even to her own ears.
"It hurts... ah... River..."
"You said you wanted me to hurt you."
"Ah... yes, more... don't stop..."
Stiffening for a fraction of a second, he swallowed a ragged breath and pinned her thighs down even wider. Her pale, naked body shuddered violently as he drove into her with all his might. White spots of light flared and flickered behind her eyelids.
A breathless, sorrowful sob escaped her parted lips. It hurt. And that was why she loved it. Because the one hurting her was River Ross.
She loved the sharp friction of their tenderest flesh grinding together. She loved sharing ragged breaths with their bodies pressed flush from chest to abdomen. She loved being tossed around helplessly under his large hands, the feeling of her body bruising against his hard muscles before she finally collapsed, utterly defeated by pleasure.
She wanted to shatter into a thousand pieces in his arms. She wanted him to possess her completely, leaving absolutely nothing behind.